“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” – Samuel Adams

Last President’s Day, about two hundred of us gathered at Westlake Park in the middle of deep blue Seattle to protest the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. Porkulus, because Washington D.C. wasn’t listening. We had tried to tell President Bush back in 2008 that we didn’t want the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP), and he and Congress did not listen. Then, one of the earliest initiatives by our new President, Barack Obama, who as a Senator supported TARP and the bailouts of the banks, was to declare the worse economic crises since the Great Depression and hurry Congress into passing a giant stimulus package.

Remember the nearly 1,100 page version of Porkulus that was passed by both the House and the Senate on Friday, February 13, 2009? The final legislative language was not made publicly available by Congressional leadership until late Thursday night, giving Congressmen, Senators and the public less than 16 hours to read the more than 1,000 pages. Seventy-two pages of amendments had been added the night before the vote. Many Congressmen and Senators publicly admitted they did not have time to read it before voting on it. It was this last, final act of contempt and disrespect for the American people that was the tipping point. After my representative and my two senators, all left-wing ideologues, ignored me, refused to empty their voicemail boxes, sent back form letters, and stopped taking phone calls, I understood what taxation without representation felt like.

Representation requires that members of Congress, at minimum, read the bills. Once they stopped doing this, none of us were represented any longer, and the Tea Party Movement was born.

Please read all of Keli’s letter at michellemalkin.com. You’ll realize that this is not about opposition to one man or one party or one issue. This is a movement made up of people from all walks of life and of different political parties all with the desire to live in peace and freedom and to be represented honestly by men and women of sound moral character according to the limitations placed upon them by our founding fathers as codified in the Constitution of the United States.